The Communist Manifesto Today

The Manifesto’s "vision of the Global Market was uncannily
prescient," remarks Francis Wheen, in his biography of Marx. (Karl
Marx, published in 1999 by Fourth Estate, London, p122.) Marx and Engels provided socialists with an understanding
of how the processes of global capitalism lead to the wars, the ruination
of nations, and the starvation of millions today. Remarking on the
collapse of the stock markets, the fall of the high-tech sector, and the
spread of recession over the last few years, Larry Elliott commented in
The Guardian

"The Marxist interpretation of globalisation may yet be proved
right. Its analysis of the events of the last few years has tended to
be more coherent than the Panglossian guff emanating from those who
believe that the world economy has never been in better shape."
(2 July 2001.)

Yet the Manifesto was written when modern capitalism and the working
class were in their infancy – in Germany, for instance, the working
class comprised less than 5% of the population. It is truly remarkable
that over 150 years after the Manifesto was published, Marx was voted
"Thinker of the Millennium" by a "clear margin" in a BBC
online poll in October 1999..

The Ideas of the Manifesto

"Class struggle" is the motor force of historical change, the
Manifesto explains. Since the earliest beginnings of recorded history,
societies have undergone fundamental change because different classes in
society are in "constant opposition." These classes represent
the "oppressor and oppressed", and the struggle between them
eventually results either in "a revolutionary reconstitution of
society at large" – or in mutual destruction.

Previous class societies were divided into many different classes struggling
against one another, but capitalist society has "simplified the class
antagonisms." Now there are just two main classes, the working class
(the proletariat) and the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie). These
classes represent those who own and control the means by which all wealth
is created, the "forces of production", and those – the newly
formed working class – who have "no means of production of their
own."

The Manifesto explains why the capitalist "mode of
production" was to sweep away feudalism – it describes in outline
the process of globalisation. Capitalism means the

Bush and Blair precisely claimed to be defending "civilisation"
after the attack on the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Centre on
September 11, 2001, by bombing Afghanistan, while actually defending the
prestige and power of the US capitalist class – but their capitalist
system is in deep crisis.

The analysis of capitalist crises in the Manifesto, the "epidemic
of overproduction" which brings austerity, a "a universal war of devastation" might have been written today:

Marc Andreessen, one of the "Gods of the Net," unknowingly
echoed the very cadences of the Manifesto in a magazine interview. He says
the "dot.com" boom went bust because people were building
"too many switches, too many routers and too much everything
else." (Internet Magazine, January 2002)

Economic Crises

The Manifesto outlines how destructive periods of recession are
inherent in capitalism. The conditions of bourgeois society, the Manifesto explains, are "too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them". As Marx explained in more detail elsewhere, "the more productiveness develops, the more it finds itself at variance with the narrow basis on which the conditions of consumption rest." (Capital Vol. 3, Ch. 15) It appears that "too much" is produced,
but the working class receives far less in wages than the value of the
goods they produce. The "consumers" of today cannot buy enough
of the products which they themselves, as workers, produced only
yesterday!

"instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society."

For Marx and Engels, the impoverishment of the mass of the population in a world overflowing with opulent wealth was - and remains - the clearest condemnation of the system of capitalism. This anarchic market system is a "fetter" of capitalism. A
socialist, democratically planned economy, released from the fetters of
the capitalist market, could match production and resources to the needs
of society.

In a distorted way, the collapse of the so-called "Communist"
countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union confirmed this. On the
tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Socialism Today,
the Socialist Party’s monthly magazine, explained that while the
societies which collapsed were a grotesque caricature of socialism,
nevertheless:

"Up until the early 1970s, we should not forget, the
nationalised economies produced impressive advances, especially in
heavy industries, though consumer goods were generally in short supply
and of poor quality. Despite many shortcomings, however, those former
societies also provided basic education, healthcare, and other social
amenities to the majority of the population - now sorely missed as
they have been destroyed by the emerging capitalist market."

The plan of production in those countries took the form of central
command from above, with large scale bureaucratic mismanagement, deprived
of a thorough-going workers’ democracy. The Stalinist regimes could no
longer develop society. But the return to capitalism meant a devastating
decline in living standards (as well as the eruption of wars, terrorism
and gangsterism) for the mass of the population.

A United Nations Development Programme report called the period of
capitalist restoration a "Great Depression plunging more than 100
million people into poverty." (UNDP Transition 1999, as reported in
The Times, 23 August 1999).